The world was tumbling.
Cael barely had time to curse as the boulder wrenched free, dragging him down the mountainside. His body slammed against jagged stones, air torn from his lungs in ragged gasps. Dust and gravel ripped at his skin, and somewhere between blinks, he lost track of the sky.
The mountain had become a blur of agony.
He barely managed to brace his legs against the rock, using his entire body like a wedge, trying to slow it. The strain felt like it would tear him in half. His teeth rattled in his skull.
"I'm going to die here.I'm going to fail".
For a heartbeat, Cael almost let go.
But then he felt it the faint, thrumming pulse deep inside his chest. The core of light and darkness that had lain dormant for too long, a hidden strength he'd barely tapped since his father's death.
"Use it", a voice inside whispered. "Stop holding back".
Gritting his teeth until they screamed, Cael let go of the fear that had shackled him. He reached inward, truly reached and found the spark he'd been afraid of.
Essence flared inside him.
Power roared up through his limbs, flooding battered muscles with burning life. His fingers tightened like iron around the boulder. His feet, bloody and torn, found impossible purchase on the shattered slope.
With a ragged scream, Cael stopped the descent.
Stone and man locked together in a frozen moment, the mountain trembling beneath them. Gritting his teeth, he planted his feet, channeled every ounce of power he had into his legs and arms, and pushed.
The boulder responded this time. Inch by inch, he shoved it upwards, dragging it toward the summit that had once seemed unreachable. Veins of power glowed faintly beneath his skin, golden and violent, each heartbeat sending tremors through the stone.
Cael climbed, no longer a boy but something more. Something forged in loss, anger, and stubborn, aching hope.
Finally, gasping, bleeding, he heaved the boulder onto the summit.
It balanced there, silent, immense.
And did not roll back.
Cael fell to his knees, chest heaving, tears mixing with blood on his face.
Above him, the clouds parted, revealing a narrow sliver of brilliant sky. Light poured over him not soft, but searing and the voice of the gods whispered through the roaring silence:
"You have endured. Rise."
Cael collapsed backward into the dust, laughing a broken, triumphant laugh.
He had passed.
Miles away, in a glade where the sun blazed gold and cruel, Fen was locked in a battle of desperation.
The Minotaur towered over him, its massive fists smashing into the earth hard enough to shatter stone. Blood slicked Fen's side where a bone-deep gash wept freely. His breath came in ragged bursts, every inhale stabbing through broken ribs.
He stumbled back, barely dodging a hammering blow. The Minotaur bellowed, lowering its horns for a charge.
Fen barely had time to raise his axe but the beast knocked it from his hands with a backhanded swipe, sending the weapon clattering far into the dust.
Unarmed.
Bleeding.
His fingers, numb with pain, scrabbled for a knife at his belt only for the Minotaur to close the distance too fast. It grabbed Fen by the arm, lifting him clear off the ground, bones creaking under the pressure.
White-hot pain flared through Fen's hand.
Two fingers broken no, torn.
He screamed as the Minotaur snapped his pinky and ring finger backward at unnatural angles, hanging uselessly by torn skin.
The beast roared in triumph.
Through the red haze of agony, Fen's mind sharpened.
Not like this.Not while Cael is still fighting.Not while Grandpa is still alive.
Snarling through the pain, Fen reached down with his free hand, pulling the an arrow from his quiver the one he had forgotten, tucked near his belt.
With every ounce of speed he had left, he jammed it upward into the Minotaur's eye.
The monster's roar turned to a high, agonized bellow but it did not die. Fen pushed the arrow deeper and deeper but the moster still stood, so he saturated the arrow with to much essence for it to countain and blew it up.
The Minotaur dropped Fen instantly, clutching at its ruined face. Fen didn't wait. He forced his broken body to move, slamming his boot into the creature's knee hard enough to buckle it. When it fell to one side, howling, Fen seized a jagged shard of stone and drove it into the exposed throat beneath the beast's chin.
Blood thick and black flooded over his arms.
The Minotaur thrashed once.
Twice.
Then collapsed, shuddering into stillness.
Fen staggered away, coughing blood, clutching his ruined hand to his chest. His heart thundered in his ears.
He had survived.
Barely.
But he had survived.
He dropped to one knee, whispering a broken prayer to no god in particular.
Then he laughed hoarse and bitter and victorious.
Across the godlands, in a lonely valley of blinding stone, Iris was breaking.
She had tried everything gripping the sword with both hands, pulling with all her might, anchoring her legs against the stone but the blade refused to budge even a fraction.
The sunless sky above mocked her, brilliant and silent.
Tears of frustration burned her eyes.
"I can't" she choked out. "I can't do this."
She had been strong all her life. She had fought through hunger, through betrayal, through every ugly hand fate had dealt her.
But this?
This was too much.
She screamed, fists pounding uselessly against the stone.
Nothing.
No crack.
No shift.
Only silence.
Something inside her snapped.
A desperate, furious defiance.
Gritting her teeth until they nearly broke, Iris drew on her core the strength she had always kept caged, afraid of what it might do and she punched the rock.
Her knuckles split on impact.
The stone didn't even tremble.
She screamed again, a raw sound torn from the deepest pit of her soul, and punched it again.
And again.
And again.
Her fists were ruined within minutes.
Skin tore away, blood spattered the boulder. Bones cracked. Her fingers bent at unnatural angles. She should have stopped. Should have collapsed.
But she didn't.
Instead, she dug deeper.
Every blow echoed the pain she had buried the grief, the rage, the loneliness.
I am not weak.I will never be weak again.
Hour after hour passed or was it days? Time blurred into pain and persistence.
Finally, as she raised her broken, bloodied hand for one last strike, she felt it a faint tremor in the stone beneath her.
The sword shifted.
Her breath hitched.
She roared, punching one final time with everything she had left.
The boulder cracked down the center with a deafening crack.
And the sword slid free, falling into her ruined hands.
Iris collapsed to her knees, sobbing against the hilt.
Her hands were mangled, a horror of torn flesh and shattered bone but she cradled the sword like a newborn, a radiant grin breaking through the blood and tears.
She had won.
Not because she was the strongest.
But because she had refused to quit.
Far above, in a place no mortal eye could see, the gods watched.
Three flames flared against the endless dark.
Each battered. Each imperfect.
But each burning brighter than any who had come before.
Meanwhile, on the mountainside, Cael staggered to his feet, the voice of the gods still humming in his bones.
Pain wrapped him like a shroud. His clothes were torn, his skin slashed open, and his very soul ached from the effort.
But he was alive.
The summit stretched around him silent, vast.
And at the far end of the peak, a narrow archway of light shimmered into existence.
The gateway to the next part of the Trial.
Cael wiped the blood from his mouth, staggered forward.
Each step cost him everything.
But each step was a triumph.
Behind him, the boulder lay still, the mark of his defiance.
Ahead, the unknown waited.
He did not look back.